despairing parents. . They hope their

Diaspora children will ensure the maintaining

of Tibetan traditions far from home. . But

surviving the trek isn’t easy. .text by Francesca Lanciniphotos by Lorenzo Maria Dell’Uva

106 . east . europe and asia strategies

Tenzin is 10-years-old, bright-eyed, smiling, hischeeks reddened by the burnishing gleam of theHimalayan sun. Using gestures and few words of

English, he offers to guide us to Boudha, the Tibetan dis-trict of Katmandu. Schools have yet to open for the dayand parents are busy toiling in the neighborhood’s manyshops. Tenzin is refugee from Tibet. He and his familyfled a several years ago and now live this teeming districton the eastern side of the Nepalese capital. It’s a Tibetanworld apart that comes to life as a result of its “stupa,” orBuddhist reliquary, the largest in Nepal and among themost precious of its kind on the planet.

It is here that Tibetan traders paused to thank Buddhafor having granted them safe passage across Himalayas,and praying for protection on their return trip. But fol-lowing Chinese repression against Tibet in the late 1950s,that parlous trip fell into the hand of Tibetan exiles flee-

Throughthe Snow to FreedomBy the thousands, Tibetan refugees embark on a perilous journey across the Himalayas to

reach Nepal and Katmandu, which has a flourishing Tibetan neighborhood. . Most of

those who make the journey are adolescents and children who have sent away by their

HIMALAYAS . 2

T

ing home. Many are no older than Tenzin, seeking deliv-erance from harm’s way.

The warm light of early morning shines on the flagsblowing tensely as pilgrims move their prayer wheels andmurmur mantras. Their energy is palpable. Tenzin, mean-while, seems happy with our look of surprise at findingsuch a lively and spiritually-charged place. Symbolismis all around us. The stupa contains paintings, etchingsand offerings to the deity. A visit to the temple is essen-tial to any understand the cultural roots of the Tibetan Di-aspora, which numbers 25,000 in Nepal alone.

Saying good bye to Tenzin, who’s finally off to school,we now head for the Tashi Boarding School, which num-bers mostly of Tibetan orphans and migrants. They’ve ar-rived her parentless. Many come from Kalash Mount,which is sacred to Buddhists, or from other towns on thelong Himalayan border region. Food, lodging and educa-tion are guaranteed to 145 children ages four-to-12. MonkTashi Tsering Lama, center’s founder (it receives lifeblo-od funding from the Italian organization Butterfly Onlus),prepares us for some of what we’re about to hear. “A gre-at many of the stories are so hard the children can’t evenspeak them aloud,” says Tashi. “Others have tried to pre-tend their past doesn’t even exist.”

On the terrace of the school, which overlooks a broadvalley, we drink salted tea mixed with ghee, clarified but-ter. “I was born five days after the Chinese invasion (edi-tor’s note: March 10, 1959),” Tashi tells us. “I belonged toa noble family and for that reason my grandfather waskilled. My parents were terrified of what might happennext, so they took my brother and me and ran all night. Inall, their flight lasted three weeks. They basically walkeduntil the they entered Nepal and sought refuge.” For 25

FACING PAGE The Boudhanath “stupa”

at the Katmandu gates. It is the largest such temple in Nepal.

It’s also the holiest site for exiled Tibet Buddhists.

108 . east . europe and asia strategies number 31 . july 2010 . 109

FACING PAGE, TOP The Potala Palace in Lhasa, once the residence

of the Dalai Lama, is now a museum occupied by Chinese troops.

FACING PAGE, BOTTOM Young monks in the Chorepatan school.

The Nepalese border village is swelled with Tibetan refugees.

ABOVE TOP The weekly schedule

for the Tashi School in Boudhanath, Katmandu.

years, Tashi studied in monasteries in India, gradually be-coming an acclaimed painter. Since 1994, he’s divided histime between Katmandu and Votigno, a southern Italiancity near Reggio Emilia. The town hosts a house dedicat-ed to the preservation of Tibetan culture and heritage.Tashi is also president of the Tibetan community in Italy.

ome students visit us during breaks from their les-son, with one group entering timidly. Sonam T-samchoe, 10, tells us his story. He was seven when

he and 11 other children, his grandmother and guidestook them to the Nepalese border, he says. Usually thereare two guides on the trip. The first is charged with mov-ing the refugees from their village to the border. They arethen met by a second “sherpa” to get them up in Katman-du and set them up in the local Tibetan community.

But not all the escapees make it though, as Sonammakes painfully clear. “We walked for 11 days straightbefore getting into a car. It was very hard to walk that wayat high elevation with all the cold and snow. My grand-mother didn’t make it because her legs froze. My motherand two brothers are still in Tibet, and both of them arepoor and sick. When they knew they couldn’t take care ofme, they worked to get me out.”

As in the case in most of Buddhist Asia, children areentrusted to the care pagoda elders and monasteries togive them means to survive and study. Financial reasonsaren’t the only ones leading Tibetan families to abandontheir children. They know that their children, if educat-ed in Nepal or India, will grow up and mature as Tibetans,learning their language, practicing Buddhism, free to ex-press themselves and their faith. These basic rights aredenied Tibetans by the Chinese government. Accordingto Claudio Cardelli, president of the Italy-Tibet Associa-tion, “it’s a tough and risky trip, but the despair [of doingnothing] worse. The Tibetans don’t want to disappear asa people. As a result, they’re willing to let their kids go,to give them a chance. After Beijing’s occupation, theirattachment to their culture has intensified.”

The stories that emerge from the boarding school stu-dents are all tragically similar. Beside Tashi sits a power-fully-built monk with a sad look. “In 2003 I went to fetchas many kids as I could on the border with Tibet,” saysGeshe Ngawang Thardo, a distinguished professor ofBuddhism at Sowayambu. “Sometimes the refugees werein such bad shape by the time I found them at the borderthat I wondered if anyone should face that kind of anodyssey.” He begins to sob and can’t continue.

The Tibetan exodus began after the Chinese crackdownin 1959, when the fourteenth Dalai Lama, the political andspiritual leader of Tibet, fled the country along with tensof thousands of people. Most of the refugees found refugein north India, in Dharamsala, where they set up the Ti-

S

110 . east . europe and asia strategies number 31 . july 2010 . 111

betan government in exile. The constant influx of Tibetanrefugees, which created a population of more than100,000 scattered throughout Indian, led Tibetan exilesto help find shelter and housing for young orphans andthose separated from their families as a result of the Dias-pora. This led to the creation of the “Tibetan Children’sVillages,” run by Tsering Dolma Takla, the oldest sister ofthe Dalai Lama. On May 17, 1960 the first group of sickand malnourished children, 51 in all, arrived at the Jam-mu refuge camp. As donations increased, mainly fromWestern donors, the early, primitive infirmaries weretransformed into real villages, homes and schools. Now,some 17,000 children are housed in these communities.

ndia and Nepal have not signed the Geneva Con-vention on refugees, but still manage the flow offoreign nationals based on local laws. “New Del-

hi guarantees the refugees all civil rights except the rightto Indian nationality and vote,” says Tashi, whose ownwork in Katmandu was in inspired by what he saw hap-pening at the Tibetan Children’s Villages. “In Nepal, ho-

wever, the arrivals face considerable restrictions. All theTibetan refugees in Nepal, including my children, willnever hold Nepalese citizenship or have the opportunityto buy land, own a house or have jobs in the public sec-tor.” Unlike India, Nepal sees the Tibetans as temporaryguests and considers its territory as a transfer station. Itwants the refugees to move on to a third country, namelyIndia. Recently emerged from a decade-long civil war, theyoung and fragile republic of Nepal represents a way sta-tion for Tibetans, their first port in a foreign land.

Barbara Monachesi of the Italian charitable group On-lus Apeiron has lived in Nepal for five years. “Nepal is acountry undermined by instability and poverty,” shesays. “The process of democratization is still very much

I ABOVE Prayers are a daily rite inside the monastery,

which is shaped to resemble the head of Buddha.

FACING PAGE, TOP A “stupa” literally means

“heap,” and is filled with Buddhist relics.

ACING PAGE, BOTTOM Gyantse is the third-largest city in Tibet.

Fleeing the country doesn’t seem to concern its population.

112 . east . europe and asia strategies

in the balance. The wounds of the conflict betweenMaoist guerrillas and the government have yet to heal.The Nepalese are scarred by this background and some-times don’t even see the Tibetans. If they do, they perceivethem as privileged, because thanks to aid the West theyhave more resources than the Nepalese themselves.”

rene Khan, a former chairman of Amnesty Italy,says the number of Tibetans crossing into Nepalhas dropped over the past two years. “China has

been applying pressure on the Nepalese government andon Maoist-oriented political parties to get them to stop ac-cepting the Tibetans,” she says. “Beijing’s hard line posi-tion started after the separatist revolts of March 2008, af-ter which the police started cracking down on bothmonks and civilians, which included waves of arrestsand executions.” “It’s true,” says Tashi, as night falls onKatmandu. “This year [2009] our orphanage got only 12new children. Chinese soldiers are patrol the entirelength of the border with Nepal.” Tempa Tsering,spokesman for the Dalai Lama in New Delhi, has con-firmed the tougher Chinese approach. Through 2008, hesaid, between 2,500 and 3,000 people left Tibet annual-ly, while the figure dropped to a paltry 600 in 2009. He al-so suggested Nepalese border police were now being bothtrained and armed by the Chinese government.

Beijing has always considered Tibet a part of China andboasts of having taken what was a backward, feudal-styletheocracy and modernized it. Though the China-Tibet is-sue is far from clear-cut, most agree the situation has ledto serious braches in human rights. Tibetans lost theirfreedom of worship, while hundreds of monasteries andartworks were systematically destroyed. China’s effortsto forcible urbanize of a predominantly nomadic popu-lation continues, as Beijing’s efforts to find ways of ex-

ploiting Tibetan territory, which is rich in water re-sources, minerals and forestland. Defenders of Tibet sayBeijing is in essence imposing Western-style 19th centu-ry colonialism, gradually placing Tibetans in the sameposition as Native Americans during the time of Ameri-ca’s Western expansion.

The sun sets behind the mountains in the distance andthe Tibetan community comes to for its ritual clockwisewalk around the stupa. Tashi joins teachers and studentsfor dinner. We hear the music of cymbals and deep voicerippling through the neighborhood. To our surprise, wefind Tenzin waiting for us outside the doors of Boudhabid farewell to his foreign friends. Suddenly, a boy who’sclambering up the stupa distracts him. Meanwhile, theflags, left limp by the latest monsoon downpour, are lift-ed by the breeze, again showing their colors. .

FOR MORE INFORMATION Since 2005, the Tashi Boar-ding School has been supported 2005 by Butterfly On-lus. Children can be adopted and sponsored from afar.For now, there are 22 teachers teaching universal prima-ry education to about 150 children. More details are avai-lable at www.butterflyonlus.org.See www.italiatibet.org, www.casadeltibet.net, www.amnesty.it, www.apeiron-aid.org. .

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